Over and Over: My Reincarnate Self

During the Friday opening of our yoga training weekends, Cat always asks us if anything is new.

The reason for this is twofold. First to discover who might not be physically up to the long daily practices. This last weekend our longest practice on the Sunday ran a bit past 3 hours and the shortest on Saturday was just two.

The second reason is to discover if anything is new in other areas of our lives as yoga is about the spirit and mind as well as the body.

I’d been in a small amount of agony all week. My back muscles were in a literal twist due to smoke intermittmently choking the air in our hamlet. An atv had set off a forest fire about 30 minutes north of us and the wind carried the char as far as the city to our southwest. Bad asthma days have the potential to bind me physically as well as clog my airways.

I kept that to myself though. I was determined to practice. I have practiced every day now for a bit over a month. Even on my worst days last week, I crawled onto my mat and did something.

As Cat surveyed the room, yoga face greeted her but no one volunteered until Rie spoke up.

Rie is different, as my daughter would say. I find her a bit tiring. She talks almost non-stop when not engaged in the actual asana practice and she is someone who has done that, been there and likes to share.

Patanjali Said What?

Yesterday during yoga training, we spent a bit of time going over the take home exam and receiving our individual teaching lessons for the in class exam.

It’s doable.

For the teaching portion, I am to instruct Adho Mukha Savasana or Downward Facing Dog. my personal nemesis. Down Dog is one of the most basic of poses and it’s one that I am still finding my self in. Every new teacher, workshop or training session shines light on Down Dog. It’s like “the pose that can do anything” because it is always the same yet different every day.

I am also presenting a sutra. Cat assigns each of us one or a short set of sutras and asks us to present/teach it to the rest of the group. Mine is 2.16 – The pain that has not come is avoidable.

And I thought? Seriously?

Yoga Face

I hadn’t thought about it before last weekend, but running undoes my yoga.

We were standing about after a practice teaching lab with Kat, the instructor, and discussing the various fitness routines – in addition to yoga – that we had and someone asked her what she did.

“Um, I do yoga,” she said, in a tone and with an expression that implied that the question itself hardly needed to be asked*.

Patanjali Says It All

Yoga training typically culminates on a late Sunday afternoon with the Sutras. We’ve hit chapter two, which is the meat of the mental practice – because yoga is all about reaching the interior whether it be the muscles and organs or the thoughts and emotions.

We spent a great deal of time on teaching beginners, so Patanjali got shorted. Thirty-five minutes is inadequate to the task of fleshing tapas.

Tapas?

Tapas is all about the pain and the letting it go. Emphasis on “letting it go”.

Patanjali insists that we are only anchored to the physical world through the pesky inconvenience of having bodies. Bodies that are not us. The true “me” of me is not my body at all. Therefore, all experience happens to the body and what “I” should be doing is experiencing, acknowledging and then letting it go.

Everything. Good, bad, meh and bloody awful. Feel it. Know it. Wave goodbye.